Blog : mobile platforms

Thanks to the cell phone, our world has become compact and information is always ready at hand. An individual’s entire life can fit in their palm or pocket.

It has become progressively important for companies and businesses to have a heavy mobile presence since smartphones and tablets have captured a dominant share of the market. Mobile application development, a pathway to marketing and branding, includes the need to create applications that run on various mobile platforms. A mobile platform is simply an operating system. For example, Apple’s mobile operating system is ‘iOS’.

Developers create applications that are targeted at specific audiences. Often, cross-sections of these audiences disperse between various mobile operating systems. The need to ‘skip’ across various platforms provides the companies the ability to reach different audiences with one application, regardless of the platform. Cross-platform services save time, money and allow code to be easily shared between different platforms. It provides a greater reach to users.

With many solutions, often come with both pros and cons. Mobile development is no different.

Advantages with cross-platform mobile app development:

Deploy your app to various platforms reaching a greater audience.

Saves time. Allows developers to write code in one language.

Reduces development costs. This allows companies to save money by not investing in one team specific to that platform.

Simple for developers. The frameworks to create cross-platform applications are designed for scripting languages which allow for a smooth transition to the mobile device.

Disadvantages with cross-platform mobile app development:

Technology does not include all features of all mobile devices and operating systems. App developers are continuously updating the apps whenever companies add new features. The framework will need to be updated to support the new additions.

Tools are restrictive. Designing an app compatible with cross-platform frameworks can challenge developers, prohibiting them from using their own development tools and suites.

Code inefficiency. The inability to work on every platform’s native language. When translation engine become ineffective, the code efficiency decreases.

Slower code and process. Due to the cross-compilation process, the code writing run time may slow down.

As with any development process, there are benefits and liabilities associated with using a cross-platform application development system. Cross-platform tools are not a universal solution. Having a development team with a working knowledge of development environment is critical.